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Discovery Labs Presents Final Assessment In A Series Of Pharmacoeconomic Analyses That Explore Impact Of Reintubation On Healthcare Costs

WARRINGTON, Pa.,
June 11, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Discovery Laboratories, Inc. (NASDAQ: DSCO) today announced the presentation of the last in a series of pharmacoeconomic analyses indicating that a reduction in the rate of reintubation
among preterm infants may potentially result in hospital cost-savings related to fewer reintubation-related diagnoses of bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD), air leak, sepsis, necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC), or intraventricular hemorrhage (IVH), including savings of up to
$562,000 per 100 patients diagnosed with BPD. The pharmacoeconomic model was developed using an observation from a previously published study that preterm infants who receive SURFAXIN® may have lower rates of reintubation when compared with preterm infants who received either Curosurf®
or Survanta®.

The findings from this third and final pharmacoeconomic analysis were presented recently at the 2013 Pediatric Pharmacy Advocacy Group (PPAG) Annual Meeting held in
Indianapolis, IN.

Inpatient hospital costs for treating neonates with the primary diagnoses of BPD, air leak, sepsis, NEC, or IVH was obtained from a 2009 database of more than seven million U.S. hospital discharges, and multiplied by the intubation rate observed in each surfactant treatment group and the incidence of each morbidity in reintubated infants. The model compared projected costs between the SURFAXIN treatment group and the comparator surfactant treatment groups from two phase 3 trials, SELECT and STAR, and yielded potential differences in hospital costs per 100 patients ranging from
$34,000 for air leak alone to
$562,000 for BPD (Figure 1).

Discovery Labs expects to submit this analysis to a peer-reviewed, neonatology-focused medical journal later this year.

"A substantial proportion of infants with RDS, especially those under 1,000 grams, need to be reintubated. The occurrence of major morbidities associated with reintubation in preterm children may potentially have a profound impact on healthcare resource utilization in the neonatal population," said Fernando R Moya, MD, SELECT Trial Principle Investigator and Director of Neonatology at New Hanover Regional Medical Center,
Wilmington, NC. "Lower reintubation rates such as those observed with SURFAXIN therapy may significantly lower in-hospital costs for the treatment of reintubated infants."

The series of pharmacoeconomic analyses is based on the observations reported in the first ever, full description of the consequences of reintubation in preterm neonates published in the
Journal of Neonatal- Perinatal Medicine (Volume 4, Number 2, 2011). Those observations include:

Infants who were successfully extubated and did not require reintubation had a significantly lower mortality rate compared with infants who subsequently required reintubation (0.5 percent vs. 18 percent, respectively p<0.05).

Infants who required reintubation had significantly higher rates of major complications of prematurity, including BPD, air leak, sepsis, NEC and IVH.

The first published pharmacoeconomic analysis suggested that the lower rate of reintubation resulted in a potential decrease in direct hospital expenses of approximately
$160,000 to $252,000 per 100 infants when compared with infants treated with Curosurf and Survanta based solely on the need for extended time on mechanical ventilation due to reintubation. Authors in that analysis noted that additional analyses investigating potential reduction in other reintubation-associated morbidities were warranted.

The second pharmacoeconomic analysis in the series suggested that the reduced rate of BPD related to reintubation might also result in an average potential hospital cost savings of
$389,247 per 100 infants.

This study presented at the PPAG annual meeting is the third and final pharmacoeconomic analysis and includes a further analysis related to BPD, as well as other key morbidities such as air leak, IVH, NEC and sepsis.